PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature no.

7, 2010

One Wolf Girl Battles Against All Mankind1

The New Breed of Female Werewolf as Eco-warrior in
Contemporary Film and Fiction

Jazmina Cininas2

Introduction
As perennial boundary riders of the Culture versus Nature dichotomy,
werewolves in Western narratives have always fluctuated between social integration
and transgression, serving as barometers of all that exists beyond the parameters of
“civilised” society. The hybrid, metamorphosing, bestial werewolf, with its
susceptibility to “the call of the wild”, has consistently been designated less-than-
human. While the male of the species has enjoyed the greater celebrity, a survey of
werewolf film and literature reveals no shortage of female werewolves amongst the
shape-shifting population, and there are definite signs that the she-wolf’s “moon” is in
the ascendant. The women’s magazine Bust advertised Girls Gone Wild: The New Crop of
Female Werewolves on the cover of its Fall 2003 issue, recognising the rising oestrogen
level in recent werewolf film and literature,3 and 2004 saw internet giant Amazon add
Beauty Is the Beast: Female Werewolves and Vampires (with subheadings Look at That Tail:
Fem Werewolf Movies and That Time of the Month: Fem Werewolf Fiction) to their So You’d
Like To… guides.4 Indeed, it might be argued that cultural constructions of women share
much in common with figurations of the loup garoux, both groups enduring long
histories on the “wrong” side of the Self/Other, mind/body, human/animal and
culture/nature divides. Ecological feminists argue that patriarchal models of
hierarchical thinking, which rank “others” as “closer to nature” and conceptualise the
land as “woman”, have been used by Western societies to justify the oppression of
women, indigenous populations, minority groups and the nonhuman world throughout
the ages. Further, the perception that “closer to nature” equates to “lesser than (white,
Western) man” has been essential to the creation and maintenance of harmful
environmental ethics that have led to the current ecological crisis, and which now
threaten dire consequences for all of the planet’s inhabitants – human and nonhuman
alike.
Literary ecofeminists suggest that by reimagining nature, and the possible
relationships (including metaphorical and conceptual relationships) between humans
and the nonhuman world, one might contribute to the “elimination of institutionalised
oppression on the basis of gender, race, class, and sexual preference and [in doing so]
aid in changing abusive environmental practices.” 5 As greater concern for the
nonhuman world enters the popular consciousness and human/nature and
human/animal dichotomies are re-evaluated, depictions of the female werewolf are
beginning to shift, reflecting a parallel evaluation of feminine alignment with the
natural world. This paper surveys the rise of ecological concerns and shifting
evaluations of the culture/nature hierarchy in recent feminist theory, and the
opportunity this presents for the female lycanthrope to be re-invented as champion of
the wilderness in contemporary film and fiction.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad She-Wolf?

Of all beasts, the wolf most embodies our changing attitude to the wilderness. As
Barry Lopez observes:
 Jazmina Cininas, One Wolf Girl Battles Against All Mankind

What men [sic] said about one, they generally meant about the other. To celebrate
the wilderness was to celebrate the wolf; to want an end to wilderness and all it
stood for was to want the wolf’s head.6

The near extinction of Canis lupus across the globe at the hands of hunters and
pastoralists has seen the once demonised predator 7 recast as “noble victim” of
mankind’s rapacious desire to conquer and exploit the natural world; loss of the wolf is
now lamented as loss of “true” wilderness.8 Ironically, this most “savage” of beasts has
served more often as a mirror of mankind than any other animal in Western narratives.
Literary historian Peter Hollindale attributes the wolf’s significance in cultural re-
visioning as due to the greater intimacy and complexity of humankind’s relations with
the wild canine than with any other beast, arguing that re-visions of the wolf have
“more to do with a re-visioning of humankind itself, [of] its own nature and its relations
with the animal world.”9
In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés argued that the
connection between the female gender and wolves was especially intimate, due not only
for their shared “psychic characteristics” 10 but also their confluent histories of
persecution:

both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and
devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. They
have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish
environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind.
The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is
strikingly similar.11

Since the 1970s, second-wave feminists have identified the perception in the West that
women were closer to the natural world than men as instrumental to justifying their
collective and systematic oppression by patriarchal societies. In 1974, anthropologist
Sherry Ortner specified woman’s reproductive biology as intrinsic to her “being seen as
intermediate between nature and culture”, and therefore “lower than man in the order
of things”.12 Six years later, Carolyn Merchant located a “dramatic shift … in common
perceptions about nature” at the advent of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth
century, during which time the “new scientific man was urged to exploit or conquer
nature, while women were associated with what was to be exploited or conquered.”13
Ecological feminist Karen Warren reasons that, in opposing their own unjustified
suppression, feminists properly oppose all forms of prejudicial domination grounded in
patriarchal institutions or power, including imperialism/colonialism, racism, and
naturism (the unjustified domination of nonhuman nature). 14 Warren’s model for
ecofeminism advocates opposing culturally ingrained sexism as a foundation for
tackling ecological and indigenous issues in concert.15 Environmental philosopher Val
Plumwood supports the contention that once a logic of domination is established over
one group, the way is paved for domination over other groups. 16 That is, having
justified the privileging of culture over nature – and locating Eurocentric man firmly
within the cultural realm – Western patriarchal institutions claim “licence” to dominate
all groups seen as closer to nature than themselves.
Literary historian Kathryn Perry observes that “the boundaries between the
human and not-human are congruent with the boundaries between those inside and
those outside society,”17 while philosophers Deleuze and Guattari posited that the first
step in any “becoming” is to become “woman”. 18 In their various incarnations,
werewolves have embodied a whole slew of Others: other nationalities, other religions,
other sexualities, other moralities, other mental states, other body types, other species,
and – if female – other gender. Monsters have always inhabited the borders of dominant
communities,19 serving as barometers of prevailing cultural mores and paranoias, and
women, as the most primary Other of them all, have been perceived as inherently
“monstrous” throughout the ages. The chauvinism that Merchant identified in the 1600s
is equally apparent two centuries later in male paranoias surrounding the women’s
suffrage movement. Protestations that women were no more capable of casting a
rational vote than horses or dogs 20 appeared in tandem with a spate of “penny
dreadfuls” featuring lupine femmes fatales.21 Elliot O’Donnell, in his 1912 compendium of
lycanthropic lore, Werewolves, confirmed prevailing chauvinist anxieties in his
declaration: “women are more desirous of becoming werewolves than men, … in fact,

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they are far more cruel and daring, and much more to be dreaded, than male
werewolves.”22
The ongoing currency of such thinking is evident in the Canadian cult classic of
2000, Ginger Snaps, in which the title lycanthrope, Ginger Fitzgerald, boasts “I’m a
goddamn force of nature… I feel like I can do just about anything” after ripping out the
janitor’s throat. Her subsequent whisper “we’re almost not even related anymore” to
sister Brigitte hints that cannibalism is not the only taboo from which Ginger feels
liberated, and she “dutifully” indulges her heighted physical strength, bloodlust and
sexuality throughout the film.23 It’s noteworthy that Ginger infects a male classmate
during unprotected sex, confirming the STD as preferred method of transmitting
lycanthropy amongst cinematic female werewolves. Scenes of male victims being
attacked and/or infected during sex occur in Ginger Snaps, An American Werewolf in
Paris,24 Pet Sematary 2,25 Howling I & IV,26 and Full Eclipse,27 colluding with Freudian
anxieties of emasculation, as well as sexual contamination, at the hands of female
sexuality.28 Estés’s claim that women and wolves share parallel cultural careers is borne
out by the use of lupa, or she-wolf, as slang for whore in Italian, as is loba in Spanish and
louve in French, while a lupanar is an Italian brothel – the conflation of women, wolves
and sexual deviancy having been established in classical times.29
Plumwood suggests that shared experiences of prejudicial oppression may help
to explain why feminists have had such a prominent voice in concurrent liberation
movements, quoting suffragette opposition to slavery a century ago, and parallel
support for civil rights by second-wave feminists in the mid-twentieth century as
examples. Plumwood understands the key role of women in current ecological and
antivivisection debates as coming from the same place:

taking the part of others when they are prevented from speaking for themselves –
or, on a closer analogy to the case of nature, when they do speak but are not
heard … has always been an essential part of effective liberation politics, and is the
kind of speech in defence of the other [that] is not only permissible but often
necessary for those aware of the other’s plight to make.30

Estés’s pop-Jungian phenomenon inspired countless women to become actively

involved with the conservation of wild wolves by specifically linking feminine
empowerment to the positive identification with all things lupine, making the grey
canine a popular pin up for the New Age goddess.31 (Indeed, Lopez has been criticised
for his choice of title, Of Wolves and Men, which effectively denies women a place in the
lupine universe.32) The popularity of Estés’s “wolf goddess” manifesto is evident in the
plethora of spin-off internet communities such as Wild Wolf Women of the Web33 and The
Howling Wolf Sisters, which stipulate that their members actively support the celebration
of women in conjunction with the protection of wolves, implying that such an “alliance”
is mutually empowering.34 The latter specifies:

If you would like to join the Howling Wolf Sisters web ring, your site must meet
ALL of these requirements:

• Your mailing list is geared primarily towards women and women’s issues.
• Your site and list also has a wolf-based theme, concerning (but not limited to)
any of the following:
– Wolf conservation or rescue
– Wolf lore
– Wolf graphics, including photography or art
– Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves or other works
• No pornographic material, promotion of illegal activity, racial or religious
discrimination permitted on the site.
35
• Absolutely no material encouraging the harm of wolves, including hunting.

The extermination of wolves in the American West has been directly linked to “a
cascade of ecological effects on everything from elk populations to beaver, birds, fish,
and even stream systems”36 with subsequent alterations to herbivore foraging patterns
resulting in the “collapsing health of aspen and some other tree species and
vegetation”.37 The Japanese Wolf Association cites similar evidence that the removal of
top-line wild carnivores “has resulted in a fractured ecosystem”,38 while a number of

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authors are beginning to argue for wolf re-introductions on ethical as well as ecological
grounds. “Moral” ecologist, Andrew Isenberg writes:

The … scientific effort to reconstruct functioning ecosystems by restoring an

important predator to its place in the food chain … also represented an assertion of
a moral order, a belief in an inherent integrity of an ecosystem managed not by
people but by wildlife.39

Regardless of ethics, rising awareness of the negative – if not apocalyptic –

repercussions for human populations of unchecked exploitation of natural resources has
resulted in a radical re-evaluation of the long-held hierarchical thinking about
humanity’s place in the world at large, and with it, a new role for the female werewolf.

The Girls Who Cried Wolf

Increasingly evident in female werewolf film and fiction is the portrayal of
werewolves as victims of human society and dominant patriarchies, as threatened rather
than threat, particularly (though not exclusively) in narratives generated by female
authors. Ben Bolt’s UK teledrama adaptation40 of Dennis Danvers’s Wilderness features a
dream sequence in which the lead lycanthrope Alice White is cut open on an operating
table to reveal that she is “furry on the inside”41 (while her wolf self frets within an
inhumanely small laboratory cage).42 Jerboa and Olga are similarly strapped to hospital
beds and subjected to white-coated prodding and testing in Philippe Mora’s Howling III:
The Marsupials, 43 confirming that antivivisection sentiments are beginning to enter
mainstream lycanthropic lore. 44 Joss Whedon encapsulates this striking turnaround
from hunter to hunted in the radically different portrayals of his two female werewolf
characters. The first, Veruca (from the Wild at Heart episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
1999),45 believes her “animal” status places her outside “human” laws and moralities,
giving her licence to indulge her bloodlust and other appetites at will. The songstress’s
raw, “animal” sexuality proves irresistible to the otherwise faithful Oz (Sunnydale’s
resident werewolf), ultimately leading to the collapse of his “wholesome” relationship
with Willow (Sunnydale’s resident witch). As such, Veruca conforms to the classic
model of the predatory femme fatale established in nineteenth-century gothic fiction. Her
successor, Nina Ash (from the Unleashed episode of Angel, 2003),46 is fundamentally
differentiated from Veruca very early on, when she is identified as a different breed of
werewolf altogether: the upright, bipedal Lycanthropus exterus. Following Darwinian
logic, this physical difference not only places Nina “higher” on the evolutionary ladder
than Veruca, it also transmutes to moral superiority. The inversion from predator to
innocent victim is explicitly illustrated when Nina is the one who ends up on the dinner
table, served up as a “very rare and special treat” at Crane’s Bistro of the Bizarre, a
clandestine and highly exclusive eatery specialising in the paranormal.
This thinly veiled allusion to restaurants that trade in endangered species,
questions the pretentions of “civilised” peoples who treat the nonhuman world purely
as a resource for human consumption. Displaying both his privilege and his
“refinement”, one of the Bistro’s cosmopolitan guests rhapsodises:

“When I dines [sic] on werewolf in Seville … the cusinera used an understated

boullaise sauce to bring out the meat’s tanginess. I’ve never forgotten that exquisite
first taste. But Chef Renault swears serving it Agnès, with a light drizzle of white
truffle oil, will be quietly surprising.”47

The moral degeneracy of such “cultural consumerism” is amplified further by the

knowledge that lycanthropes revert to human form after death, i.e. Nina must be eaten
alive if the patrons are to experience genuine werewolf haute cuisine. Despite his
vampirism, Angel’s affronted observation – “Geez, they garnished you?” – coupled with
Nina’s preparedness to end up in a doggy bag rather than risk hurting others, raises
questions as to who the “monsters” really are in this scenario.
The clearly sympathetic figure of Nina nevertheless still views her lycanthropy as
a curse that must be kept under control. As such, Nina operates within classic
culture/nature, human/animal hierarchies, anguishing over her “regressive” condition
and taking measures to protect others from her “beastliness”. In common with Randi
Wallace from the 90s television series She Wolf of London (aka Love and Curses),48 Alice
White from Wilderness, Katherine from the Canadian film Skinwalkers,49 and Seraphine

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from An American Werewolf in Paris,50 Nina locks herself up once a month, confirming
her lycanthropy as involuntary, dangerous and undesirable. 51 Karen White, in the
original Howling, goes one further and provides the ultimate “community broadcast” by
having herself shot on live television in order to warn others of her kind.52 Significantly,
men regularly assist in the monthly caging, locking, strapping, shooting or otherwise
restraint of the female lycanthrope, reflecting the essential conservatism among film
makers in general, when faced with culture/nature, human/animal and male/female
dichotomies.
Nevertheless, along with individual victimisations, werewolf populations in
general are increasingly depicted sympathetically as destined for the Red List.53 For
example, Vivian Gandillon, the heroine of Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood and Chocolate,
traces her ancestors to the exodus fleeing seventeenth-century werewolf hysteria in
France for a clean slate in the New World.54 (Klause obviously lifts Vivian’s surname
from the French sisters Perrenette and Antionette Gandillon, executed as werewolves in
1584).55 Mora’s Howling III combines clichéd European werewolf mythology with the
shameful environmental legacy embodied by the Tasmanian tiger (or marsupial wolf),
utilising the parallel demonisation and persecution of the two animals to cast the lead
lycanthrope, Jerboa in a sympathetic light.56 Jerboa’s Russian counterpart, Olga, explains:
“We kill to protect ourselves. You’ve been killing us for thousands of years. What choice
do we have?” When the sympathetic biologist, Beckmeyer, pleads on her behalf, “Don’t
you see the point of nurturing a species like this?”, an army official responds that policy
demands the elimination of this “dangerous” – possibly satanic – species, regardless of
their scientific value, echoing past rhetoric used to sanction the hunting of both wolves
and thylacines57 (and of course witches).
Klause’s alpha-hero Gabriel (ultimate “mate” to Vivian) laments:

There’s no wilderness to hide in anymore. We can’t run in packs in the

mountains … there are no black forests that stretch on for days, and it’s been many
centuries since we ruled small kingdoms in the dark centre of Europe as if we were
gods. Homo sapiens is everywhere, they outnumber us.58

Even Katja Von Garnier’s film adaptation of Blood and Chocolate (which owes little to the
book apart from the title and character names, and sees Vivian reject Gabriel outright in
favour of the “meat boy”, Aidan) identifies a long history of persecution of Homo lupus
and the nonhuman world by Homo sapiens. Von Garnier’s alpha villain Gabriel fumes:

We have survived for five thousand years, by hiding from who we are. We have
been chased from everywhere – England, France, America … The race of man is
corrupt at its core. The only thing it’s good at is destruction.59

When Bolt’s “televised” Alice White relinquishes human society in favour of her wolf-
self (having survived an attempted rape at thirteen before being betrayed by both her
psychiatrist and her lover in adulthood), it is significant that she does so in a protected
reserve. The sanctuary (the location of which must be kept secret) is in the wilds of
Scotland – the only place in the UK where she has any possibility of finding a pack to
join.60 Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, though not technically a werewolf film, is
relevant for its title character who epitomises the eco-warrior heroine: being raised by
wolves, San identifies herself as wolf, and willingly puts her life on the line to protect
her beloved forest from wholesale destruction by human industry.61
The threatened environment is a recurring theme in Miyazaki’s films,62 and it is
no accident that he sets Princess Mononoke in a time in Japanese history of burgeoning
industrialisation, militarisation, and deforestation, 63 a time corresponding with the
“demotion” of the wolf from benign guardian to evil spirit in the popular
consciousness. 64 Wolves became extinct in Japan at the beginning of the twentieth
century, but are returning to favour, and the Japan Wolf Association (JWA) have been
rallying to have the wolf reintroduced since 1993. The Association argues:

The wolf … is an indispensible part of the [Japanese] forest ecosystem … The

extinction of the wolf came about because, with the growth of the human
population and the development of industry, humanity invaded the territory of
nature and did not consider the possibility of co-existing with the wild environment.
Now, we human beings, as a result of the environmental destruction we have
caused ourselves, fear for our own existence … because humans and the Earth are

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part of the same ecosystem, human prosperity can only come about by living our
lives as a part of nature. And so, in recent years, there has flourished a movement to
protect the nature that remains and to restore that which has been lost. Shouldn’t
we call the wolf back to the Japanese forest?65

The JWA’s plea echoes ecofeminism’s calls for the recognition of the interdependency of
human and nonhuman worlds, and acknowledgement of the self-destructive vanity of
privileging culture over nature, demanding a re-evaluation of this position as a matter
of dire urgency. Plumwood warns that:

What makes this human-centred framework of rationality especially dangerous …

is that it encourages a massive denial of dependency, fostering the illusion of nature
as inessential and encouraging through radical exclusion the illusion of the human
as outside nature, invulnerable to its woes. A framework which is unable to
recognise in biospheric nature a unique, non-tradable, and irreplaceable sustaining
other on which all life on the planet depends is deeply antiecological.66

Judith Plant is more blunt:

The basis of power-over, of domination of one over the other, comes from a
philosophical belief that has rationalised exploitation on such a massive scale that
we now not only have extinguished other species but have also placed our own
species on a trajectory toward self-destruction.67

Miyazaki credits capitalist greed and militarism for turning forest gods into
demons, who in turn retaliate by attacking humans, the cruel irony being that the most
vulnerable, and least culpable, human society finds itself in the firing line. Iron Town’s
industrialist monarch, Lady Eboshi, is determined to rid the forest of its ancient animal
gods so that she may plunder the forest’s resources uninhibited.68 The iron ball that
Eboshi shoots into the giant boar Naro poisons the god, sending him on a rampage that
effectively spells the extinction of the Emoshi people, who had themselves only escaped
imperial extermination by retreating deep into the eastern forests.69 Here they had been
able to lead a peaceful and respectful co-existence with the nonhuman world, prior to
the poisoned boar’s appearance. As such, Miyazaki’s Emoshi are akin to indigenous and
minority populations who often bear the brunt of environmental consequences of
capitalist expansion. Princess Mononoke might have been custom made to illustrate Betsy
Hartmann’s argument that:

dominant economic systems which squander natural and human resources in the
drive for short-term profits; and the displacement of peasant farmers and
indigenous peoples by agribusiness, timber, mining and energy firms [are the real
culprits of environmental destruction]. Ignored also is the role of … war and arms
production, and the wasteful consumption patterns of industrialized countries and
wealthy elites the world over in creating and exacerbating environmental
destruction.70

In recent manifestations in film and fiction, werewolves have been able to

increase their numbers through “infecting” others with bites or scratches, following the
model of vampirism, rabies and tetanus.71 This option is presenting itself less often to
the hirsute sisterhood, whose otherness is beginning to manifest itself as nonhuman
altogether, and as a consequence, is increasingly under threat. Like Angel’s Nina,
Howling III’s Jerboa and Olga are identified as a separate species of human, with the
biologist Beckmeyer clearly believing this alone warrants their protection. Beckmeyer
(who becomes smitten with Olga) enthuses:

This has got to be the greatest scientific discovery of all time; a live, alien species. A
marsupial human that has evolved in secrecy, simultaneously to our species.72

Beckmeyer’s advocacy (which falls on deaf ears) finds parallels in thylacine “enthusiast”
arguments that wolves and Tasmanian tigers evolved simultaneously, but that the
marsupial reproductive system was used unjustly to argue for the tiger’s “retrograde”
status as compared with the placental (and European) wolf, thereby sanctioning its
extinction. 73 (Related arguments of “inherent” inferiority can be found in colonial
rationales for the genocide of the indigenous population).74 Although both Jerboa and

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Olga defy basic biology and give birth to “mixed species” children in the course of the
film, recent trends in fiction deny any shared DNA between lycanthropes and Homo
sapiens. When Clause’s heroine Vivian informs her Homo lupus mother that she is going
on a date with a “meat boy”, the mortified Esmè responds:

“One of them asked you out?” Her mother’s expression combined repulsion and
surprise. “I won’t allow it … ‘Don’t date if you can’t mate,’ the saying goes.”
Human and wolf-kind were biologically incapable of breeding.75

Similar allusions to the “bestiality” of such a union are found in Donna Boyd’s The
Passion:

“What you are suggesting,” said Nicholas without hesitation, “is a deviancy
beyond imagination. No werewolf could mate with a human in his natural state,
much less conceive a child – it is not a physical possibility.”76

And Tanya Huff’s good natured, uninhibited, nudist Canadian werewolves confirm the
separateness of the two “species”:

“For starters, you can forget everything you’ve ever seen at the movies. If you’re
bitten by a werewolf, all you’re going to do is bleed. Humans cannot become wer.”
“Which implies that werewolves aren’t humans.”
“They aren’t.”77

While all three authors grant their werewolf races physical superiority to humans in
every respect (i.e. they are uniformly faster, stronger, better looking, and infinitely more
adept in bed – or behind the bushes, as the case may be), it is still acknowledged that the
werewolf’s inability to increase its numbers through human recruits condemns it to the
same precarious fate as other top predators in humanity’s hunting sights. The
promotional line on the front cover of Blood Trail specifically identifies the werewolf as
Canada’s most endangered species.78

Hirsute Heroines and She-wolf Deities

A concurrent trend in contemporary female werewolf narratives is the depiction
of lycanthropy as a desirable condition, and not just among the morally degenerate. This
phenomenon can also be traced back to Estés, who drew heavily on Native American
female nature deities, striking a chord with a new generation of women eager to
participate in “the valorisation of the feminine”. Werewolf scholar Chantal Bourgault de
Coudray distinguishes this popular movement through its recuperation of

mythologies and symbols of feminine embodiment and spirituality. … In

reclaiming such images as a source of feminine empowerment, … [t]he ensuing
literature of “goddess worship” effectively valorised and rehabilitated nature and
femininity, merging feminist and ecological concerns.79

Goddess worship, if not goddess ancestry, is becoming a staple motif in werewolf

fiction by female authors. Huff’s matriarchal80 wers claim direct descent from:

a she-wolf and the ancient god of the hunt … When the ancient Greek and Roman
religions began to spread, the wer began calling themselves Diana’s chosen, the
hunting pack of the goddess.81

The chief deity for Clause’s werewolf pack is the Goddess Lady Moon, whose venerable
high priestess Aunt Persia might have been drawn from a New Age goddess hand
book.82 In Princess Mononoke, San’s relationship with her wolf-god foster mother, Moro,
resonates with Native American totemic spirituality, while her wolf-skin cloak and
wolf-tooth necklace is evocative of shamanic attire. Indigenous totemism is overt in
Mora’s Howling III, in which the Caucasian Jerboa traces her tribe’s origins to the
Dreamtime mating of a human with a wolf,83 and shares a “natural” alliance with the
Aborigine, Kendy. Huff’s wers are also “tied to the land in ways we just can’t
understand”,84 echoing the strong bioregional affinities of many indigenous peoples.
A number of writers remain ambivalent about the appropriation of indigenous
spirituality by white, middle class women, not least the indigenous “guardians” of said

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spiritualities, who view such appropriations as the latest example of colonialist cultural
“pillaging”.85 Others, such as Cyborg Manifesto author Donna Haraway, take issue with
the female self-aggrandisement that dominates New Age goddess “worship”, arguing
that any faith-based argument is inherently flawed. Haraway proclaims, “It’s not just
that ‘god’ is dead; so is the ‘goddess’.”86 Nevertheless, an ethical model premised on a
mutually respectful relationship between men and women, as well as humanity and the
natural world, proves an irresistible fit for many of ecofeminism’s ideals. Plant explains:

The message of the First Peoples to the Europeans five hundred years ago was to
recognise that human beings have a place in the natural world and that this place,
like all of life, is sacred … And now ecofeminists are speaking for all that has been
denied this sacred reality, in order that Western civilization may move beyond its
isolated and destructive way of being … The old order, with its fear of difference
and its desperate need to control the world, cannot possibly be the world view that
will enable humanity to find its place in nature.87

Deborah Rose Bird finds parallel virtues within Aboriginal relationships to “country”:

Aboriginal people are talking about a holistic system, and … say that if you are
doing the right thing ecologically, the results will be social and spiritual as well as
ecological. If you are doing the right spiritual things, there will be social and
ecological results.88

While ecofeminists are supportive of protecting wildernesses, they are careful to

distinguish themselves from environmentalists who demand the exclusion of humans
from natural landscapes altogether, arguing that such practices only serve to perpetuate
notions of humanity as outside nature and the subsequent “misguided thinking of
development and abuse.” 89 Lori Gruen concurs: “Much of the problem with the
attitudes many have toward animals and the rest of the nonhuman world stems from a
removal from them.” 90 Haraway declares that in contemporary Western scientific
culture, “the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached” 91 and
identifies animal rights movements as “a clear-sighted recognition of connection across
the discredited breach of nature and culture.”92 Haraway supports Naomi Weisstein’s
assessment that patriarchal self-interest in science has led to the current ecological crisis,
as well as her call for women to be part of the solution:

Women have recognised more often than men that we are part of nature and that its
fate is in human hands that have not cared for it well. We must now act on that
knowledge.93

In this new climate, the female werewolf –with her privileged intimacy with the
nonhuman world – has the capacity to embody the reconciliation of humanity with
nature, serving as a vehicle for feminine enlightenment rather than signalling her moral
and intellectual debasement. Lupine femmes, informed by recent feminisms, have begun
to embody notions of “becoming”, finding points of affinity between women and
animals rather than emphasising common identities, dissolving hierarchies and “rigid
boundaries of Self and Other” in favour of fluidity.94 Chantal Bourgault de Coudray, in
her important work of werewolf scholarship, recognises that

celebrating lycanthropy as an ability that enriches rather than undermines the

conscious experience of reasoning subjectivity [as well as] the access to nature …
that emerges through lycanthropy [has the potential to be] configured as a powerful
resource for self-development.95

She concludes:

Keeping apace with the development of both popular and critical feminisms …
narratives of female lycanthropy have thus experimented with the positive
revaluation of those “negative” qualities traditionally associated with women (such
as nature, embodiment, and intuition).96

Just before renouncing her “humanity” altogether in favour of becoming a full-time

wolf, Alice White shares an epiphany with field biologist, Jane Garth:

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I used to think that if only I could control her I would be happy. But I was wrong …
Now I realise that the wolf is the best part of me.97

Both Vivian Gandillon (the original book version) and Elena Michaels in Kelley
Armstrong’s Bitten behave most responsibly once they embrace their lycanthropic
destinies (and dump their human beaus in favour of heretofore resisted werewolf
suitors), resulting in relationships that are not only more satisfying, but also less
threatening to human populations. In fact, the male werewolves in Bitten are portrayed
with such physical, sexual, intellectual, moral and aesthetic superiority to “mere”
human males that it is difficult to fathom why Elena chose to resist pack membership
for so long and so vehemently. Pam Keesey’s 1996 anthology of short stories, Women
Who Run with the Werewolves,98 is striking in that virtually all of the fifteen stories depict
the wolf as the preferred state. Indeed, in Ursula le Guinn’s The Wife’s Story, Steve Eller’s
The Final Truth, Judy Brewer’s Moon Running, Marie Hersh-Tudor’s The Wilder Truth and
Jeremy E. Johnson’s Euphorbia Helioscopia it is the human state that is seen as the
aberration.99 Von Garnier inherited the script for Blood and Chocolate, and was effectively
committed to portraying Vivian as loathing her werewolf inheritance (an inversion of
Klause’s original, who adored being loup garou). Even so, Von Garnier still manages to
cast Vivian as a messiah for her people. When Gabriel tells Vivian he was mistaken in
thinking she would be the fulfilment of the ancient prophesy in which “the girl with the
ancient bloodline of leaders would one day command us, and lead us into a new age of
hope and glory”, he fails to understand that Vivian’s union with Aidan (and by
extension, humanity) offers the best hope for the survival of the loup garou race. Vivian’s
effortless mid-air transformation into a real, and beautiful, white wolf amongst a blaze
of light is also amongst the most poetic and euphoric cinematic werewolf
transformation scenes.

Conclusion
While the majority of female werewolf cinema and literature still conforms to
established human/animal and culture/nature hierarchies, recent re-evaluations of
these classic dichotomies have opened the door to more positive imaginings of the
hirsute sisterhood. The rising incidence of not just sympathetic, but also physically and
morally superior female werewolves in film and fiction suggests that an increasing
number of women recognise such a space as desirable. Literary historian Marina Warner
observes:

The threat of entropy in nature, brought about by human achievements … has

never been so seriously nor perhaps … so acutely felt. Nature, newly understood to
be somehow uncontaminated, innocent, nurturing and spontaneous, beckons as a
remedy to the distortions and excesses of progress.100

Loss of “humanity” through metamorphosis into animal form used to signify a

fall from grace; however, now that the pedestal that once supported “culture” has been
seriously undermined by accusations of wastefulness, artifice, vanity and “intrinsic
sinfulness”,101 nature is being celebrated as manifesting the latest, and pre-eminent,
virtue – sustainability. As representatives of the nonhuman world, which, for the first
time, is being considered as a superior realm, a genuinely empowering space may have
finally become available for female werewolves within contemporary narratives.
Warner continues: “In modern myth, it’s not that the boundary has been eroded
between human and animal – rather, the value given to each side in the contrast has
changed.”102 And concludes: “The new myth of the wild calls into question the privilege
of being human at all.”103
Haraway’s contention that we have entered a “mythic time”, in which “we are all
chimeras”, and her argument for “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for
responsibility in their construction”, 104 elevates the female werewolf from the “sub-
human” realm, enabling a reconsidered hybrid that exceeds the single categories of
nature and culture.105 Furthermore, in a “fragmented, multi-dimensional, postmodern
world”,106 hybrid identities grounded in nature are less likely to be condemned as
aberrations and corruptions, and more likely to signify adaptability and tolerance,
multiple viewpoints and multiple possibilities, and indeed, offer the most hopeful
model for “reconciliation” between human and nonhuman spheres. Future excursions
through the lycanthropic forest may lead to a superhuman, ecologically proactive,
female werewolf waiting for us in Grandma’s bed.

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 Jazmina Cininas, One Wolf Girl Battles Against All Mankind

Notes

1. The title of this paper, “One Wolf Girl Battles Against All Mankind”, was lifted from the promotional
website for Hayao Miyazaki’s animated movie, Princess Mononoke:
http://animationartist.com/mononoke/, accessed 14 April 2001.
2. Jazmina Cininas is a practising artist, curator, arts writer and lecturer in Printmaking at RMIT University,
Melbourne, Australia, where she is currently undertaking her PhD, “The Girlie Werewolf Hall of Fame:
Historical and Contemporary Figurations of the Female Lycanthrope”. Her ongoing Girlie Werewolf
Project has been exhibited nationally throughout Australia and has also toured to Lithuania. Her work
has been collected by most major Australian collections, and has been exhibited throughout the world.
Jazmina has also presented papers on female werewolves at conferences around the world. For the
record, Jazmina is not a werewolf.
3. Liisa Ladouceur (2003), “Women Who Run With the Werewolves”, Bust, 25, pp. 52-55.
4. Robert Cadnum, “So You’d Like To… Beauty is the Beast: Female Werewolves and Vampires”
www.amazon.com.exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/DE4OO9Z37G71/ref=, accessed 26
November 2004
5. Gretchen T. Legler (1997), “Ecofeminist Literary Criticism”, in Karen J. Warren, ed., Ecofeminism: Women,
Culture, Nature, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 227-28.
6. Barry Hulston Lopez (1995), Of Wolves and Men, Touchstone, New York, p. 140.
7. The wolf has a long history of “cultural affiliation” with the demonic. Chantal Bourgault du Coudray
observes: “Christianity has … been implicated in tying imagery of the beast [Satan] more closely to the
wolf, since the identification of the followers of Christ as ‘flocks’ and Christ himself as a lamb has led to
characterizations of Satan or ‘the beast’ as a wolf” Chantal Bourgault du Coudray (2006), The Curse of the
Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror and the Beast Within, I.B. Taurus, London, p. 66.
8. The Japanese Wolf Association, for example, states: “A forest where the wolf cannot be seen is not real
nature.” JWA Newsletter, quoted in John Knight (2004), “Wolf Reintroduction in Japan?”, in John Knight,
ed. (2004), Wildlife in Asia: Cultural Perspectives, Routledge, London, p. 241
9. Peter Hollindale (1999), “Why the Wolves Are Running”, The Lion and the Unicorn, 23 (1), p. 59.
10. These are listed as: “keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and
women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply
intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack.” Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992),
Women Who Run With the Wolves, Rider, London, p. 4.
11. Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves, p. 4.
12. Sherry B. Ortner (1974), “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” in Ellen Lewin, ed. (2006), Feminist
Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell, Boston, p. 84.
13. Jacqueline Broad argues for a reappraisal of Carolyn Merchant’s 1980 book, The Death of Nature: Women,
Ecology and the Scientific Revolution, in Jacqueline Broad (2006), “Women and Nature: A New Historical
Perspective”, Metascience, 15, p. 113.
14. Karen J. Warren (2000), Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters,
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, p. 1.
15. Warren refers to the shared dominations of these three interest groups the (somewhat unwieldy)
“women-other human Others-nature interconnections”. Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy, pp. 1-2.
16. See Val Plumwood (1997), “Androcentrism and Anthropocentrism”, in Karen J. Warren, ed., 1997,
Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 340.
17. Kathryn Perry (2004), “Unpicking the Seam: Talking Animals and Reader Pleasure in Early Modern
Satire”, in Erica Fudge, ed. (2004), Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures,
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, p. 25.
18. The philosophers repeatedly return to this assertion throughout Chapter 10: “1730: Becoming-Intense,
Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible”, specifically identifying becoming-woman as the first step
in any becoming on pp. 274, 300, 306 of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (2007), A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Continuum, London.
19. “Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations.” Donna J. Haraway
(1991), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, New York, p. 180.
20. “If the argument for equality was sound when applied to women, why should it not be applied to dogs,
cats, and horses? … to hold that brutes had rights was manifestly absurd … and if unsound when
applied to brutes, it must also be unsound when applied to women.” Thomas Taylor, quoted in Kathleen
Kete (2002), “Animals and Ideology: The Politics of Animal Protection in Europe” in Nigel Rothfels, ed.
(2002): Representing Animals, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 31
21. du Coudray presents a comprehensive analysis of Victorian representations of lupine femmes fatales in the
The Curse of the Werewolf; see especially pp. 46-47.
22. Elliot O’Donnell (1996), Werewolves, Oracle, Hertfordshire, pp. 277-78 (originally published 1912).
23. John Fawcett, dir. (2000), Ginger Snaps, Canada. Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins play the Fitzgerald
sisters Ginger and Brigitte respectively.
24. See Anthony Waller, dir. (1997), American Werewolf in Paris, USA.
25. See Mary Lambert, dir. (1992), Pet Semetary II, USA.
26. See Joe Dante, dir. (1981), The Howling, USA, and John Hough, dir. (1988), Howling IV: The Original
Nightmare, USA.
27. See Anthony Hickox, dir. (2001), Full Eclipse, USA.
28. Leslie Shaber (My Mom’s a Werewolf) provides a rare example of a woman contracting lycanthropy in
anything even remotely approaching sexual circumstances, when a flirtatious nip on the toe by a male
suitor results in her lycanthropic infection. Not even rape victims Alice White (Wilderness) and Daniella
(Werewolf Woman) can claim to have been infected by their attackers; rather, the lycanthropy already latent
within the young women is triggered by their violent sexual “initiation”. See Michael Fischa, dir. (1988),
My Mom’s a Werewolf, USA: Ben Bolt, dir. (1996), Wilderness, UK: Rino di Silvestro, dir. (1976), Werewolf
Woman, Italy.

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29. “Some ecofeminists philosophers such as Val Plumwood argue that the historical roots of the unjustified
domination of nature originated in classical Greek philosophy and the rationalist tradition.” Warren,
Ecofeminist Philosophy, p. 23.
30. Plumwood, “Androcentrism and Anthropocentrism”, p. 350.
31. du Coudray makes this same observation, and sees the wolf as rival to the dolphin as New Age symbol
of ecological awareness. See du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf, p.128
32. A personal friend of Lopez’s, artist John Wolseley, informed me of the author’s “slap on the wrist” in
conversation in 1996.
33. Includes links to “Wild Wolf Woman of the Month” and “Defenders of Wildlife”. Wild Wolf Women of the
Web, www.wildwolfwomen.com, accessed 16 February 2002
34. “This relationship is sometimes assumed to be such that empowering women will also empower nature”
Plumwood, “Androcentrism and Anthropocentrism”, p. 349.
35. Howling Wolf Sisters Web Ring: Site Qualifications,
www.geocities.com/Wellesley/6464/howl.WolfSisters.html, accessed 13 December 1999.
36. David Stauth (2004), “The Ecology of Fear: Wolves Gone, Western Ecosystems Suffer”, OSU News &
Communication Services, 8 December 2004,
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2004/Dec04/fear.htm, accessed 28 November 2008.
37. Stauth, “The Ecology of Fear”.
38. Knight, “Wolf Introduction in Japan?”, p. 242.
39. Andrew C. Isenberg (2002), “The Moral Ecology of Wildlife”, in Nigel Rothfels, ed., Representing Animals,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 49.
40. Bolt, Wilderness. Alice White’s role is shared between Amanda Ooms and Ayla (the wolf).
41. In 1541, a farmer from Pavia confessing to lycanthropy claimed his fur grew on the inside. In order to test
the truth of this assertion, his captors cut off his arms and legs, and he died of mutilation. See Sabine
Baring-Gould (1995), The Book of Were-wolves, Studio Editions, London, p. 65. Angela Carter also warns
that the worst wolves are hairy on the inside, in her rewriting of the Red Riding Hood tale. Carter (1979),
“The Company of Wolves”, The Bloody Chamber, Vintage, London, p. 117.
42. Dennis Danvers (2000), Wilderness, New York, Eos.
43. Philippe Mora, dir. (1987), Howling III: The Marsupials, Australia. Jerboa, a were-thylacine, is played by
Imogen Annesley. Olga Gorki (a defecting were-ballerina-wolf) is played by Dasha Blahova.
44. Kete discusses the prominent feminist role in antivivisection movements in Britain and France. See Kete,
“Animals and Ideology”, especially pp. 27-28.
45. David Grossman, dir. (1999), “Wild at Heart”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Four: Episode Six, USA.
Creator Joss Whedon. Veruca is played by Paige Moss.
46. Marita Grabiak, dir. (2003), “Unleashed”, Angel, season 5, episode 3, USA, Creator Joss Whedon. Nina
Ash is played by Jenny Mollen.
47. Grabiak, Unleashed.
48. See Dennis Abbey (1990-1992), She Wolf of London aka Love and Curses, UK/USA. Randi Wallace is played
by Kate Hodge.
49. See Jim Isaac, dir. (2006), Skinwalkers, Canada. Katherine is played by Sarah Carter.
50. Seraphine Pigot is played by Julie Delpy.
51. The werewolf’s susceptibility to the lunar cycle has been another significant factor in consigning an
increasing number of lycanthropes to the feminine domain, linking them to the menstrual cycle. This
“dormitory effect” deserves its own essay, however, so is beyond the scope of this paper.
52. Karen is played by Dee Wallace.
53. The Red List of Threatened Species is a comprehensive, and impartial inventory of plant and animals species
requiring conservation, updated each five years by the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
54. Klause, Blood and Chocolate, p. 12.
55. For more info on the Gandillon family, see Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-wolves, p. 78.
56. “it is no coincidence that Tasmania, the island that killed its tiger and has regretted it ever since [has
become] one of the world’s most protected places. Few would dispute the role of the thylacine in making
that come about.” David Owen (2003), Thylacine: The Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger, Allen & Unwin,
Crows Nest, p. 31.
57. Donna Boyd, author of the werewolf romance The Passion, exploits the established nature of such
thinking. Her human heroine, Tessa, confronts the werewolf, Alexander: “You are evil. From the
beginning of time we’ve known that; even the Church teaches us so. You are the spawn of the devil …
everyone has heard the stories!”
He regarded her with a mixture of outrage and amusement. “What utter nonsense!”
Donna Boyd (2006), The Passion, Harpertorch, New York, p. 19.
Robert Paddle contends that the thylacine suffered similarly poor public relations, and was considered a
“blood-sucking vampire and fearsome werewolf” during Tasmania’s colonial history. See Paddle (2000),
The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, pp. 29-30.
58. Klause, Blood and Chocolate, p. 190.
59. Von Garnier, Blood and Chocolate.
60. In Danvers’s original version, Erik is able to convince Alice to return to “civilisation”, and she lives part
of her life as a woman and part of her life as a wolf, on the edge of Angonquin Park, a wolf reserve in
Canada. For a comprehensive ecocritical analysis of Danvers’s novel, see Peter C. Coleman (2006), “Alice
and the Wolf: Exploring Dennis Danvers’ Wilderness”, Colloquy, 12, pp. 75-83.
61. San is voiced by Clare Danes, while Moro is voiced by Gillian Anderson in the English dubbed version.
62. Peter Watson explores the environment as recurring themes in his thesis. Watson (2006), Japanese Culture
and the Environment: A Discussion of the Kojiki, the Nihongi, and the Works of Hayao Miyazaki, University of
Chicago, Environmental Studies Program.
63. Miyazaki sets his story in the Muromachi Era (1392–1573 or 1333–1467) during which time the
relationship between the Japanese and nature changed dramatically. Iron production jumped, requiring
forests to be felled for charcoal, and people came to think of nature as something to be tamed. Women

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enjoyed greater freedom, and rigid class structures were yet to be established. Miyazaki sees parallels
between the Muromachi era and the turmoil evident in contemporary society. See Team Ghiblink (2002),
The Hayao Miyazaki Web: Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) synopsis,
http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mh/synopsis.html, accessed 28 November 2008.
64. Knight charts changing attitudes towards the wolf in Japan, from benign guardian prior to the eighteenth
century, after which the rapid spread of rabies badly affected Japanese opinion of the canine. Knight also
attributes deforestation and changing agricultural practices for the wolf’s loss of affection. See Knight,
“Wolf Introduction in Japan?”, pp. 234-35.
65. In the JWA’s first newsletter; Knight, “Wolf Introduction in Japan?”, p. 241.
66. Plumwood, “Androcentrism and Anthropocentrism”, pp. 344-45.
67. Judith Plant (1997), “Learning to Live With Differences” in Warren, Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature.
68. It should be noted that Lady Eboshi, while disastrous to the environment, does not fall into the easy
category of “villain”, and has many redeeming qualities. She is adored and respected by the residents of
Iron Town.
69. The “barbarian” Emishi lived in Japan’s northeast, and kept their independence from the Japanese
Emperor’s government until the late 700s, when they were finally defeated by the first Shogun. Nothing
remains of their culture. Miyazaki uses artistic license to create a surviving clan of Emishi half a century
later, in hiding from the Emperor’s regime. See Team Ghiblink, The Hayao Miyazaki Web: Mononoke Hime
(Princess Mononoke).
70. Native American activist Andy Smith argues that colonisation is the chief cause of poverty and
environmental degradation in the Third World, and takes umbrage with those who blame
overpopulation in such regions. Smith (1997), “Ecofeminism through an Anticolonial Framework”, in
Warren, Ecofeminism: Women, Nature, Culture; see p. 27 especially.
71. The infected bite is a relatively recent addition to lycanthropic lore. Indeed, in 1912, O’Donnell
differentiated werewolves from vampires on precisely these grounds, stating categorically: “Vampirism
is infectious … Lycanthropy is not infectious. O’Donnell. Werewolves, p. 134.
72. Mora, Howling III: The Marsupials.
73. Paddle describes such designations as “placental chauvinism”, and warns of the moral and cultural
repercussions of such scientific labelling. See Paddle. The Last Tasmanian Tiger, pp. 7-8.
74. Jazmina Cininas touches on the totemic relationship between the indigenous Palawa people of Tasmania
and the thylacine, as well as their shared history of persecution by colonial settlers, in Cininas (2008),
“Antipodean Bestiary: Reconstructions of Native Fauna and National Identity in the Work of Eleven
Contemporary Australian Artists”, PAN: Philosophy, Activism, Nature, 5, pp. 4, 8.
75. Klause, Blood and Chocolate, p. 33.
76. Boyd, The Passion, p. 19. It should be noted that Boyd’s aristocratic werewolves defy the trend of being
closer to nature, and indeed are credited not only with being impossibly accomplished and cultured, but
also with bringing civilisation to humankind.
77. Tanya Huff (1992), Blood Trail, Daw Books, New York, p. 50.
78. Ibid., front cover.
79. du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf, pp. 119-20.
80. “Each pack is made up of a family group of varying ages, with a dominant female in charge … They run
the pack. The family. The farm. They do the breeding.” Huff, Blood Trail, p. 51.
81. Ibid., p. 50.
82. “A pale figure took form in the darkness, and out stepped Persia Deveraux dressed in silver robes. In her
hands she carried a silver bowl, as ripe and as full as the moon. She sang a moaning soft song that
throbbed like the heart of a beast.” Klause, Blood and Chocolate, p. 147.
83. Jerboa relates the Dreamtime story of the Phantom spirit, a man who loved a beautiful wolf and had
hybrid children with her. Mora, Howling III: The Marsupials.
84. Huff, Blood Trail, p. 51.
85. Smith is one such critic. See Smith, “Ecofeminism through an Anticolonial Framework”.
86. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 162.
87. Plant, “Learning to Live With Differences”, p. 139.
88. Deborah Rose Bird, quoted in Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy, p. 213.
89. H. Peter Steeves (1999), “They Say Animals Can Smell Fear” in H. Peter Steeves, Animal Others: On Ethics,
Ontology, and Animal Life, State University of New York, Albany, p. 151.
90. Lori Gruen (1997), “Revaluing Nature”, in Warren, Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, p. 363.
91. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 151.
92. Ibid., p. 152.
93. Naomi Weisstein, author of Women Look at Biology, quoted in Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p.
80.
94. Such thinking owes a debt to Deleuze and Guattari, who state: “A becoming is not a correspondence
between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification … To
become is not to progress or regress along a series.” Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 262.
95. du Coudray, Curse of the Werewolf, p. 8.
96. Ibid., p. 128.
97. Bolt, Wilderness.
98. Pam Keesey, ed. (1996), Women Who Run with the Werewolves: Tales of Blood, Lust and Metamorphosis, Cleis
Press, Pittsburgh.
99. The following passage from Judy Brewer serves as an example: “Now that she was herself again, she
could remember it all. Her memory was rain-clear and the horror of it stalked her through the night. She
could not outrun it. She had been human … The sickness had plagued her pack for generations, infecting
individuals at random … Humans were lawless, immoral, unclean creatures.” Brewer (1996), “Moon
Running”, in Keesey, Women Who Run with the Werewolves, p. 54.
100. Marina Warner (1995), Six Myths of Our Time: Little Angels, Little Monsters, Beautiful Beasts and More,
Vintage Books, New York, p. 80.
101. Warner, Six Myths of Our Time, pp. 65-66.
102. Ibid., p. 71.

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103. Ibid., p. 75.

104. Haraway,. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, p. 150.
105. Slavoj Žižek describes the werewolf as embodying the slippages between culture and nature;. Žižek
quoted in du Coudray, Curse of the Werewolf, p. 3.
106. du Coudray, Curse of the Werewolf, p. 1.

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